I was the interior designer of my
own prison. I worked long hours, night and day in the desert of Life to build
it into a fortress so strong nothing could break in or out.
When I started, they had just given
me a bare piece of ground, told me to make something out of it and when I
looked around, everyone else had built prisons too. They were all different
shapes and sizes of course but they were prisons all the same. No one that I
could see had done anything different, so I didn’t think to either. I didn’t
think about how I never saw those people walking around outside their prisons,
or anyone else admiring them. Actually, I never saw anyone else at all now that
I think about it, except occasionally, when the moon was full and the stars had
been breathed out across the sky. On nights like that sometimes I would see
someone dancing across the desert horizon, leaping and twirling, arms raised to
the heavens. Something in me would jump and want to join them in that dance,
but then I would look at my bare patch of ground again and know that I must
stay, that this was more important that dancing for the stars.
I started my prison by laying a
strong foundation, as everybody knows the foundation is the most important. So
under the hot sun I poured out the expectations of the world. In one corner I
started with the assumption that everyone must fight to get anywhere in this
life. And towards the centre I poured the fact that everyday will eventually be
the same and that you just have to get through them, then towards the other
corner I poured the idea that money and stuff is the key to happiness. My
foundation was complete.
Then I started with the brickwork,
each brick a lie that I told the world so they would not know who I really was.
Some of the ones I was most proud of were the bricks just above my head height
that said I don’t need anyone, I am independent. And also the one that said I am always happy,
nothing ever makes me jealous or sad or confused. My favourite though, was the
brick that said Everybody likes me all the time. There was a little problem
though, when I went to find someone to show them my handiwork, I couldn’t get
out because the lying bricks had been built too high. But it didn’t matter, I
could show them later.
Once the bricks had been laid, I
went to work on a coating of distance around my heart. This was very important
because in the desert sometimes people tried to get close to me and touch my
heart. This always scared me because my heart is sensitive and when people
touched it like that, it would make me feel things and think about things.
Sometimes it would even make me forget that I am independent and that I was the
only person I needed to think about.
Those are dangerous thoughts, I have seen people disappear over the horizon completely once they had those thoughts, so you see, this coating of
distance was very necessary for my prison. I put on two coats just to make sure
that no one would ever come close to me like that.
Now it was time to build the roof. I
wanted to get this done as soon as possible, because when I looked at the stars
at night from my prison floor, I would sometimes hear the songs of those people
who danced near the horizon, and my heart would beat a little faster and I
would see in my mind their uplifted hands and flowing ribbons that they ran
with. Sometimes this would get so bad that I had to pace the narrow corridors,
repeating to myself my bricks of lies, that I was independent, that I didn’t
need anyone, that dancing and singing were for fools. So I built my roof, big
sheets of corrugated pride that kept all those noises out. There were still
little gaps so I wound big coils of barbed wire fear that would make sure I
never peeked through to see the dancers.
My prison was almost finished; I
just needed to add the finishing touches. Some bars of Bitterness to put across
the door, chains of Shame that would keep me from ever trying to leave my
prison and padlocks of Worry that would drown out the memories of the singers
with lists and chores and work.
My prison was complete.
But that night as I sat and admired all my years of
work, I realised in a moment of horror that I had left the keys on the other
side of those bars and that the walls were higher than I remembered and that
the coating of distance was so thick that it drowned out all sound from the
desert...in here, all I could hear was the pounding of my heart as I realised
the wonderful prison I had built now had its one and only inmate.
At first I tried to break through my walls, throwing
myself against them again and again, but I had built them too strong. I tried
peeling back the sheets of pride on the roof, but I had put too many nails in
and it was pointless. So I screamed and wept and scratched the distance on my
walls but it was too thick, no one could break through. No one saw me, no one heard me, and no one in
the desert knew I was here.
In the darkness of that first night, I understood why
I never saw any of the other prison builders.
Eventually I just gave up. Sat in the corner of my
prison and allowed the lies I had built with to seep into me, to become a part
of me, no longer could I tell where I stopped and my prison started.
Over the years, the paintwork faded and the roof rusted.
Spiders and cockroaches were the only life inside these walls. Occasionally I
would walk the corridors and allow my arms to scrape the stones. The sharp
rocks would scratch me and the pain would remind me that I too was alive, if
this sort of existence could even be called such thing. Dark fingers would
reach out to me, coaxing me down, down to where nightmares are born. Their
voices would surround me, go inside me and whisper that I was alone, that I
would die here and no one would ever even know.
In time, the memories of the hot desert sun were
replaced by the never ending chill inside my walls and the images of millions
of stars were no longer able to be found.
But as I lay there in my bed of sin, sometimes the
faintest whisper of the horizon dancers’ music would surface from somewhere
deep deep inside me. I would weep as I remembered I used to hate them because
they were foolish, but now I realised I hated them because they were free. And
more than anything now, I wanted to join them and dance under those stars I
couldn’t even remember.
I had fallen so far into nothingness; I couldn’t tell
what was real anymore and didn’t have the energy to walk the corridor to remind
myself anyway. But through that fog one night came the sound of thunder, a
sound which shook even my strong foundations. I stared wide eyed into the
eternal darkness as the beating of drums surrounded me matching my heartbeat so
it seemed like my entire being pulsed with the rhythm of them. Dust was shaken
free and fell from the rusty roof beams, coating the floor and my sin bed. The
ground heaved beneath me and I fell as all around me the bricks, my strong
bricks that I could never move, broke into a thousand pieces.
Then the light came, a piercing beam so bright that I
couldn’t stand it, whimpering I crawled into the shadow of the rubble, trying
to disappear into the dusty ruins of my prison. Noise assaulted my ears, ears
which knew only the sound of my grief now heard laughter and singing and birds.
I huddled in a tight ball, eyes squeezed tightly shut, knowing this is not
happening, my prison was too strong, no force could break through. As I curled
up in the dirt, all of the sounds faded and I heard a single set of footsteps.
Was I not alone? Were people still out here?
The footsteps stopped and a shadow blocked the
burning sunlight, I heard the rustling of clothes and the shuffling of feet.
Then He touched me.
No one had touched me before.
Holding my breath I slowly lifted my eyes and looked
into the face of the One who knelt in the dirt beside me. Never will I forget
that moment.
His eyes were the colour of Love and they looked past
mine, into my soul and as He looked, the dark ones shrieked and faded away. His
hands were rough and had scars which twisted His skin into knots. I knew
looking at them, that the same force which had reduced my prison to rubble lay
in those hands. That His scars were from breaking my walls. I too had tried to
break them but instead my hands had been broken and bleeding while the bricks still
stood. I held out my hands to show Him and saw only perfect, smooth skin. Had
He taken my scars too?
He reached out and wrote in the dirt in front of me,
whispered truth into the cold dark places of my soul. Then taking my hands in
His, He drew me up to stand in the light. We walked together, me and the man
called Love, out of the rubble and into the distance.
Now I live with the horizon dancers, where heaven
meets earth. I spin and twist and leap under the night sky and sing with a new
song. The darkness doesn’t live in me anymore, because I walk in the light. I
am not a prisoner but have been set free. And I don’t need pain to tell me I am
alive, because I have been touched by Life Himself.
I realise now that the people I used to catch a
glimpse of, leaping across the horizon, didn’t dance for the stars as I once
thought. No, they dance for the man called Love.
